Growing Doubts About Dr Walensky

On Saturday, I linked to a New York Post editorial saying "The White House needs to find a different voice for public health pronouncements." Yesterday, a second center-right organ, the Washington Examiner, ran an editorial entitled Dr. Rochelle Walensky has made a mockery of the CDC.

This week, under her direction, the CDC changed its guidance to encourage fully vaccinated adults to put their masks back on in certain situations. This flip-flop is not based in science but in hysteria.

. . . When pressed about the guidance change, Walensky blamed the unvaccinated, who now make up the majority of coronavirus cases and deaths. But this does not justify the CDC’s recent decision. Why should the vaccinated be punished for the bad decisions of the unvaccinated?

. . . Under Walensky’s guidance, the CDC has become untrustworthy, illogical, and prone to reversing itself based on political nonsense. Its guidance has changed so many times, often in spite of scientific data, that the public can hardly know what to believe. The CDC needs better leadership if it is to maintain even a shred of credibility, and Walensky has proven that she is incapable of using the power entrusted to her.

A commentator farther to the right made a carefully reasoned post at RedState following Dr Walensky's interview with Bret Baier on Friday:

To those who watch public health policy, this week has been a shocking revelation, with the CDC and health policy “experts” making indiscriminate statements devoid of any reference to data, but tonight I have actually had to ask myself – does the Director of the CDC actually understand this virus?

. . . After being asked if she was considering vaccine mandates, Dr. Walensky returned to her usual indecisiveness, stating that it seemed to be a local and private business prerogative at this point but they were certainly “looking into the option.” It seems there is little more going on at the CDC at the moment than “looking into” things, whatever that actually means – and it certainly is a poor substitute for action or science. Later on, she walked back this statement, stating she meant a mask mandate rather than a vaccine mandate. Which would be easier to believe if, in her response to Baier, she had not explicitly mentioned vaccines.

. . . Concluding with a softball question, Baier asked which vaccine was best against the Delta variant. She denied there were data to suggest any one vaccine is better than another. Certainly, this might have come as a shock to those who have prepared the internal briefing slides and read the actual studies – many of which conclude the mRNA vaccines are significantly more effective than other vaccines against the Delta variant.

This is fundamental. This was something she should have known, with data she claimed she was specifically presented with earlier this week.

. . . The CDC’s display of incompetence, indecisiveness, and inadequacy is causing active harm. Every time Dr. Walensky is on air, it is not just her credibility that diminishes, but also that of the vaccination effort, testing, and the wider fight against COVID-19.

Another commentator noted that she's even gone back to the meme from March of last year:

Perhaps CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has no sense of irony. We recently passed the 500th day to slow the spread, which, as we all know, started with 15 days to slow the spread in March of 2020. Now, Walensky is saying that if we all put on a face diaper and get the jab, we can defeat the Delta variant in a few weeks:

I love how Walensky constantly says things that her own agency’s website does not support. The CDC will not consider any American who receives the vaccination today “fully vaccinated” for two weeks. . . . In fact, after two weeks, people vaccinated today will not receive their second dose for three weeks with Pfizer and four weeks with Moderna.

And about that two-week timeframe. It just might be that Walensky is being informed by the experience of a similar country. The United Kingdom started a sustained increase in the number of daily cases around June 3, 2021. They reached their peak on July 16 and have shown a sharp decline since. The United States started a sustained increase on July 3, 2021.

Using the UK as a guide, we could expect to turn the corner and start to decline in, wait for it, about two weeks. Dr. Scott Gottlieb has said publicly he believes this wave will be over by some point in September.

But another media expert talking head is piping up that most masks don't actually work. '

During a segment on CNN Monday afternoon, University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy Director Michael Osterholm said cloth or paper masks don't work to stop the spread of the disease.

This, of course, has been well known for over a year. Dr. Anthony Fauci told former Obama Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell that store-purchased masks do little to stop the spread of the disease.

The problem is clear: Dr Walensky, abetted by the White House, is sending vague non-messages on policy that are effectively enabling the hysteria of the press and local moral entrepreneurs. As a result, indoor mask mandates for the vaccinated are all the rage, and Louisiana's governor is the first to impose one statewide. I suspect pressure will mount on Gov Newsom now to impose one in California, though a number of counties have now imposed their own. This will certainly hurt him in the recall if he does it.

The problem is that people are getting smarter. This isn't 2020.